No Evidence of Dioxin Cancer Threshold

The study mentioned below helps build our argument that there is NO SAFE DOSE of dioxin. Often, polluting interests will argue that the amount of pollution they are releasing is "safe" because they project that people will receive a dose that is below the level at which the chemical in question can cause harm (usually defined as a cancer death in a healthy, adult, white male exposed to only one chemical at a time). The study below refutes an industry claim that there is a safe "threshold" dose - below which dioxin won't cause cancer. As with radiation, dioxin appears to be dangerous at ANY level, no matter how small.

2003 OCT 28 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Re-analysis of data finds no evidence of dioxin cancer threshold. According to a study from the United States, "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed an estimate of the human cancer risk from dioxin, using the standard low-dose linear extrapolation approach."

"This estimate has been controversial because of concern that it may overestimate the cancer risk. An alternative approach has been published and was presented to the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board's Dioxin Review Panel in November 2000," wrote D. Mackie and colleagues, Princeton University, Princeton Environmental Institute.

"That approach suggests that dioxin is a threshold carcinogen and that the threshold is an order of magnitude above the exposure levels of the general population," the researchers wrote.

The researchers concluded: "We have reexamined the threshold analysis and found that the data have been incorrectly weighted by cohort size. In our reanalysis, without the incorrect weighting, the threshold effect disappears."